Internal prototype — every project, amount, and backer shown here is placeholder data, not a real campaign.

うそからUSOKARA
Hiroyuki Fukuda × USONO ・ Something personal

Put weather instruments at my parents’ house

Turning the sky over a place nobody measures into ten years of numbers.

The Japan Meteorological Agency runs about 1,300 AMeDAS stations. That sounds dense, but it averages one per 17 km square. The sky in between is measured by nobody.

In one of those in-between places is the family home of Hiroyuki Fukuda, an officer of USONO inc. That is where the instruments go.

Fukuda runs this one. He is a certified weather forecaster and delivers weather commentary on NHK radio — *N Radi*, *Kyo no News*, and occasionally the Sunday programme *Children's Science Telephone Consultation*. He is also the representative of Kyokuchifu Inc., founded in 2020.

*Kyokuchifu* means a local wind — the wind that only a particular landform produces. A man who explains the sky over the whole country most days of the week is interested enough in local weather to name his company after it, and holds not one data point about the sky over his own family home.

Temperature, humidity, wind, solar radiation. Everything that can be measured. (Photo: M J Richardson / CC BY-SA 2.0)
Temperature, humidity, wind, solar radiation. Everything that can be measured. (Photo: M J Richardson / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Temperature, humidity, pressure, wind direction and speed, rainfall, solar radiation. Readings every ten minutes, recorded automatically and published on the web for anyone to see. The full history will be downloadable as CSV.

Why do it? Honestly, not for any practical purpose. It is curiosity: if you turn one place's sky into ten years of numbers, something might show up. Whether it turns out useful will be clear in ten years. If it doesn't, the data still exists.

We are raising the cost of the instruments, the installation, and ten years of connectivity and maintenance. Observation is harder to continue than to begin. A record that stops partway is worth less than half, so the ten years are secured at the start.

[This page is a prototype. All amounts, specs, and dates are placeholders.]

Risks and challenges

The most concrete risk is that it doesn't continue. Private observation stops for equipment failure, power cuts, and lost connectivity. The observation and data design are handled by Hiroyuki Fukuda, a certified forecaster, so we aren't worried about the quality of what's recorded — but broken equipment needs a human on site. That works while somebody lives at the house, and that could change. Securing ten years of maintenance up front is our answer to it.

The siting isn't ideal either. The ground doesn't fully meet the Meteorological Agency's criteria for surrounding obstacles and surface conditions, so this data is not a substitute for official observation. It is a record of one point, and we say so from the start.

Lightning is a real threat. We'll fit protection, but a direct strike destroys instruments. There is a contingency, but not for repeated strikes.

Finally: this is not a plan that makes sense as company business. It produces no revenue. We want to do it anyway, so we're asking only the people who want it too.

Frequently asked questions

5
Who does the observing

Hiroyuki Fukuda, a certified weather forecaster, handles instrument selection, siting judgements, and data quality control. It is still not official observation, so its limits are published alongside it.

Can anyone see the data

Yes. Published continuously on the web, with the full history downloadable as CSV. Use it freely — we only ask that you cite the source.

Where is it

We publish the location down to the municipality, not the street address. It's somebody's family home, so bear with us.

What happens after ten years

We either raise the maintenance again or find someone to take the instruments on. The data up to that point remains.

Do I get anything for backing this

Physically, about a printed record card. The real reward of this plan is that the data exists.

Reservations

5 recent
  • 匿名 ¥6,000
  • 雨宮 「名前のとおり応援します」 ¥3,000
  • 匿名 ¥12,000
  • 汐見 「誕生日の空が知りたい」 ¥6,000
  • 匿名 ¥3,000